Finally …New powder-coating success for Cora! The Jupiter 8 Corroder

Great news! Finally I have managed a successful powder coat for Cora! Thank you to everyone who sent me messages of support to keep going! Well … i put in the time and work all over again and thank the Lord…this time its paid off.

This time I used a 3rd powder coding workshop who had been highly recommended to me as a place that handles “difficult” jobs. I was too embarrassed to take it back to the first workshop. Clive was on the other side of town and well over an hour’s drive away as well. I had a feeling I would be dropping in periodically this time to inspect the progress so ideally a place on my side of town that understood the importance of the job and has the right color in stock would be ideal. I found that place in Prism Powder Coating and the two fine lads Ed and Sash:

The minute I walked in I instantly felt confident that they knew what was required. We discussed the process of undercoat… and then powder coat… and then sand …and then second powder coat that I had done with Clive originally. But because I done such great prep work with the metal filling and sanding this time, they looked at the surface and were mighty impressed and convinced that they could pull it off with just an undercoat that would be sanded and then a single powder coat top. I was not convinced it would work but had to listen to advice and try. A second powder coat could always be added if it was not smooth enough at the end of the day. They explained a problem however, where the manufacturer of the Zinc undercoat paint specifies that it is not to be sanded in anyway before the powder coat is applied. It was the first I had heard of this. Even fingerprints can cause adhesion problems with the top powder coat layer. So this time instead of zinc undercoat they used what they called “Black Primax E-primer” that they believed would be better because it could be lightly sanded and the resulting powder coat would stick better, and they were right. And I trusted Sash to do the sanding in between as well. This job cost me a little bit more than Clive but the pictures speak for themselves Now I have a beautiful panel to work with and move forward to the next stage!

This was really Cora’s last chance at success with her original panel. If this had failed completely and required another strip back to the panel metal, she would have just been weakened to an unacceptable degree. I kind of expected it to fail to be honest and this is why I started measuring up every angle and every gap and every corner, and with some help had started designing the JUPITER 8 top panel in 3-D CAD as you can see from the video at the end of my last post. I’m excited but cautious, as there is still plenty that could go wrong at the next point in the process, with the decal application. One crooked print and it could require another powder coat if it can’t be removed cleanly to try again. So I’m going to continue with the 3-D CAD design to the end. A Jup8 panel has certainly never been 3-D generated before so that will be a first and useful to the synth community no doubt somewhere along the line in the future.

Here is Jedi powder-coating master Sash carrying out Cora from the workshop to my car:

And another shot inside the cardboard coffin I made for her to avoid any chance of damage:

Just magnificent and smooth.

Another angle… the rear:

Hinges are not welded shut against the panel (unlike a previous time) but are clean and free to swing… yay:

Underside looks perfection:

Now that I have her back I can do the last few measurements required to finalize the decal artwork file. Then I need to get a test print of the file to transfer paper to test it’s accuracy and just be 100% sure before sending it to have the expensive films made for over printing with paint.